Implementation and maintenance of a voluntary data contribution system to an international network: The Vermont Oxford Network at Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital

The Vermont Oxford Network (VON) is a not-for-profit voluntary collaboration of international health care workers and is the world’s largest voluntary database for very low birth weight (VLBW) infants and NICU admissions, with anonymised submissions from more than 1400 centres worldwide.  

Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital (CMJAH) is currently one of only 8 South African public hospitals that submit anonymised data to VON on an annual basis, and we have done so since 2014.  

In this presentation we will:  

• Discuss how we successfully implemented the VON programme at CMJAH 

• Discuss the challenges in implementation and maintenance of a VON programme  

• Briefly present summarised data on key performance indices (KPIs) for VLBW infants for the birth year 2021 in comparison to the global network and other South African sites 

• Briefly present data from our own centre for the previous 7 years and identify trends  

• Highlight the benefits of a VON programme  

• Discuss improvements in patient care and outcomes that have been instituted as a direct result of the VON programme 

The data presented will be descriptive only, with no statistical comparisons. 

Data from one centre alone is not sufficient to give an accurate representation of the current landscape in VLBW neonatal care and where further efforts to reduce morbidity and poor outcomes may best be directed. Benchmarking our performance against both national and international standards gives a better picture of the unique challenges we face in limited resource settings, particularly in the public sector, and allows us to identify areas for possible improvements, interventions, and future research.